Risorgimento Continued (Neapolitan Bourbons)...

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Why is it when I see Neapolitan Bourbon I have cravings for ice cream with biscuits!

[Szymon]

They look great   Especially the lancers  

[Leman]

I always had a hankering for these after seeing them in John Mollo's book back in the late 60s.

[Westmarcher]

This is not helping (love the figures and your artwork by the way). I feel an overwhelming urge to venture into this whole 19th Century thing - you know, Risorgimento to Franco-Prussian - maybe even Crimean War - I thought ACW was enough .....(cries of anguish as overwhelming weight bears down) .........

[Leman]

My starting point was ACW, then Crimean, then FPW, then APW, and now FAW with the 2nd Schleswig War and the Russo-Turkish War waiting in the wings, phew!

[Javier Gomez]

Great looking figures!

I think the cavalry are probably better than they look as they are a bit out of focus. It's a problem I have with a lot of my shots.

A few tips on photography (sorry if I'm not using well the technical terms):
-set your camera on Manual mode
-set the diaphragm as close as possible (in other words reduce the aperture) in order to gain the desired depth of field
-set the White Balance according to the light circumstances
-set the ISO as low as possible (200 or so)
-set the focus on manual mode if possible
-select the option to shoot with a 10 seconds delay after pressing the button

You don really need to have a great camera but a tripod is a must as the minimum aperture you would need to get the proper depth of field (and thus don't have the foreground or the background out of focus) requires a long exposition –and you can't just handle the camera without moving that long!
I hope this would be useful

[sdennan]

Amazing painting. Well done that man.

[Werthor]

I love your painting, expecially the lancers standard, keep it up!

[cameronian]

Tidy little fellows but shouldn't they be running in the opposite direction ?

[Leman]

A tad culturally incorrect. Who was doing the running in 43AD?

[Bill Braham]

Le Coq Fou: Excellent paint job and innovative use of the new Piedmont infantry as Neapolitans. I have previously wondered about using Austrians in greatcoat for the Bourbon infantry - properly they should all have an infantry hanger but worth overlooking in order to be able to field a force.

[Bill Braham]

Tidy little fellows but shouldn't they be running in the opposite direction ?

Ah Cameronian

The Neapolitan army gets a bad press in English chiefly because of Trevelyan's trilogy on Garibaldi. Yet it is hard to reconcile that perception with the events.

In the key first meeting engagement at Calatafimi - at which most of the Neapolitan force was not engaged the Red Shirts were having a tough time of it - there was a certain amount of to and fro (which Trevelyan fails to identify as skirmishing). He even misrepresents a skirrmish line of the 8th Cacciatori falling back on its supports as a retreat. What gave Garibaldi victory was that Neapolitan commander, Major Sforza, received orders from the commander in Calatafimi, Landi, to withdraw back to the town. So although Garibaldi 'won' the first encounter it is more that the Neapolitans withdrew in response to superior orders. Garibaldi was able to portray this as a victory won with the bayonet but bizarrely Trevelyan quotes a letter that Garibaldi wrote in in which he comments on the nature of the hand to hand fighting and the Neapolitans hurling rocks at the red shirts when their ammunition gave out. This is hardly the behaviour of a cowardly or demoralised mob. Garibaldi got his first piece of luck, what he needed, a 'victory' over the army although it was more due to General Landi's orders than bayonet charges.

We also can point to the extensive street fighting in which the Red Shirts and denizens were unable to wrest control of the Palermo from the garrison. A deal was only brokered by a combination of foreign consuls and naval officers concerned more about the possible damage to property if the fighting was not ended (one assumes it was foreign owned property?).  The Viceroy acquiesced and the garrison was evacuated - they did not run away. In the next major action, Milazzo, once again the Neapolitan garrison put up a serious fight and sore pressed the Red Shirts - in Garibaldi's memoirs he comments on the severity of the combat and comments that some of the main commentators who rubbish the Neapolitans were not actually at the battle! The main combatants at both Calatafimi and Milazzo were Cacciatori battalions although the line and artillery were involved in Palermo.

What seems to have been one of the main issues with the Neapolitan Army is the higher command. Regimental officers seem to have been comptetent enough but senior officers were either lacking in the will to fight or the ability to conduct a campaign. One brigade in Calabria even assassinated its general when he tried to disband them rather than fight. They promptly then marched off to Naples. Once King Francis had decided to abandon Naples (poor old Franky was not a very good general nor much of a politician otherwise he would not have got in the pickle he got himself into) and withdrew to the line of the Volturno the game was on for a set piece action.

With better staff work and co-ordination the Neapolitan attacks along the Volturno could have succeeded, the army certainly knew the ground as it was their customary location for field exercises. In many places Garibaldi was sorely pressed - he was charging around like a madman bolstering morale and managed to hold on until reinforcements arrived (in the nick of time by train from Naples!). In this he was aided by the non arrival of one of the Neapolitan flanking columns which took one position and then just sat down and did move on as planned. In the end Garibaldi held on by the skin of his teeth - but it was enough by then militarily as well as politically the Bourbon state was doomed as the Piedmontese had invaded from the North. Even so many of the Bourbon soldiers refused to accept the unification with Piedmont and ended up forming guerrilla bands that gave the new Italian kingdom lots of headaches for decades after 1860.

So I would have to say that the Neapolitan rank and file were well armed (they had either Enfield or Mine rifles I forget which), seemed to be tactically adept, with reasonable regimental officers but were badly let down by the higher command from brigade all the way up to the king. In some respects they are a bit like the Mexican Army in the Mexican - American war but certainly not poltroons in red trousers - Garibaldi did not think so and who am I to disagree with 'The General'? (Who is a bit of a hero of mine actually despite me being an Austrophile).

All this talk of Garibaldi makes me pine for his eponymous biscuits!

[streetgang]

Gentlemen: I feel a bit daft asking this now but can anyone tell me the proper color for the Neapolitan greatcoat? The Freikorps booklet "Red Shirts" states that it was a grey-blue for both line and cacciatori. I have seen artwork, including the Osprey book on Garibaldi, depicting it as a medium grey blue color. The recent Osprey released states that line had a dark blue great coat and the cacciatori had a grey, I have seen images depicting this as well. Can anyone provide some insight? I painted my figures with a grey blue coat (actual color distorted by flash). Thanks!

[d_Guy]

Really well done. Colors and details of the infantry may indeed be a prize winner.

[Leman]

1860s is still in the period of predominantly unstable dyes, so probably all three colours quoted would pass muster. I have seen an ACW player state that he has about five different dark blues and three different light blues for painting Union jackets and trousers. In his book on Wargaming the ACW Paul Stevenson states that "the sky blue colour of trousers in reality faded to a pea green colour."
Similarly if you look at contemporary colour prints of French greatcoats from this period they vary in colour enormously from quite dark blue to quite light blue-grey.
I really think that slight variations in colour are unimportant in this period as it reflects what the troops actually looked like in the field, with uniforms coming from different factories and then a few weeks exposure to the vagaries of the weather.